Stars do fade however, but true love stories don't.
I happen to read the following article about Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett Majors and could not help but believe in love -- again. (Original story and photo published in the Toronto Star, by Cathal Kelly).
True love story: Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett
O'Neal fulfils his role as romantic lead, at Fawcett's side as she battles cancer
That mop of blonde hair was only one of the assets that made her the most famous pin-up ever. It's gone now. Ravaged by cancer, Farrah Fawcett is reportedly bald and near death.
Her familiar other half, Ryan O'Neal, collected her hair and keeps it at home.
"A week ago, Farrah said to me, 'Am I going to make it?' " O'Neal told People magazine in an interview earlier this week. "I said, 'Yes, you'll make it. And if you don't, I'll go with you.' "
Fawcett was first diagnosed with rectal cancer in 2006. The disease was temporarily beaten back, but has returned. According to reports, it has spread throughout her body, including to her liver.
O'Neal said doctors have stopped aggressively fighting the cancer and begun palliative care.
"Farrah is on IVs, but some of that is for nourishment. The treatment has pretty much ended," O'Neal said.
Fawcett, 62, and O'Neal, 68, have been on and off for nearly thirty years. They never married. But even by Hollywood standards, they forged an unusual bond.
In their heyday, they were a couple as familiar as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and just as tumultuous. Their relationship has been punctuated by breakups, recriminations and frequent reunions.
But as the third act nears its end, O'Neal is by Fawcett's side, fulfilling the role of the romantic lead he's played so often.
"It's a love story. I just don't know how to play this one. I won't know this world without her," O'Neal said.
Fawcett was a Hollywood bit-player in 1976 when she agreed to pose in a swimsuit. The iconic shot of her in a red one-piece (worn to cover a childhood scar on her stomach) became the best-selling poster of all time.
Nearly simultaneously, she was chosen to star on Charlie's Angels, a high-camp girl-gang detective show. It was an era-defining success, pushing Fawcett to the top of the tabloid ladder.
She was already married to an enormous TV star, Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors. That relationship floundered under the pressure of Fawcett's growing celebrity.
At age 38, O'Neal's greatest successes were already behind him when he met Fawcett, ironically, through Majors. In 1979, she left her husband and took up with O'Neal.
He was (and is) best known as Oliver Barrett, the male lead in Love Story opposite Ali MacGraw. In it, he plays a university student from a patrician family who turns his back on his inheritance for the woman he loves. Soon, she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. He tries to hide the disease from her. She finds out and endures stoically. In the end, she dies. The thought of this movie continues to draw out moans and tears, the reasons for which differ depending on your gender.
Love Story's tagline – "Love means never having to say you're sorry" – was embedded in popular consciousness when Fawcett and O'Neal boarded their own romantic roller coaster.
Like O'Neal, Fawcett's career high was already receding in the rear-view. She quit Charlie's Angels in a huff after two seasons, looking for meatier roles. She was lured back for three years' worth of recurring guest spots, but her career arc had already turned downward. A planned movie career went nowhere.
Fawcett had a brief professional renaissance in 1984, playing against type in The Burning Bed, a drama about domestic abuse.
In 1985, she and O'Neal had a son, Redmond. Right now, Redmond, 24, is in jail serving time after a drug-related parole violation. O'Neal said the family has opted not to tell Fawcett that Redmond is imprisoned.
"I lie to her. It's the best thing," O'Neal said.
Throughout the late 80s, they each tried separately to re-establish themselves. In an effort to synergize their appeal, they co-starred in an execrable 1991 TV sitcom entitled Good Sports. The show's opening credits billed them as "Farrah Fawcett vs. Ryan O'Neal."
The battling was not confined to the small screen.
"Sometimes Ryan breaks my heart," Fawcett once told TV Guide. "But he's also responsible for giving me confidence in myself."
They split for the first time in 1997. Fawcett grew flakier. O'Neal got fatter. But they continued to maintain a strange grip on tabloid attention, driven by their habit of attention-seeking confessions followed by teary reconnections.
O'Neal was blindsided by a tell-all biography by his daughter, Tatum. She painted him as emotionally distant and violent. A well-publicized fistfight with another son, Griffin, seemed to prove the point. When O'Neal was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001, Fawcett returned to his side. His cancer is now in remission.
Now that her cancer has returned, O'Neal has done likewise.
It doesn't quite attain the purity of emotion that Love Story threw up on the screen, but Fawcett and O'Neal's own three-decade affair has weathered time and disappointment.
And like his former character, O'Neal said he is left confronting his memories.
"I can't hear a song, I can't pass places that we were together, without being stabbed in the heart."
Forgive me for being cheesy today, but well, isn't this love?
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